Of Scalpels and Whispered Promises
by momentarything
Summary: MerDer, sweet, sometime in future. “She was taking little steps, day by day, and it was him who made her realize each additional piece and it was him who let her put the pieces together, just as he took others apart with scalpels and whispered promises.


**Meredith/Derek set somewhere in the future. Sweet and the like. "She was taking little steps, day by day, and it was _him _who made her realize each additional piece and it was _him_ who let her put the pieces together, just as he took others apart with scalpels and whispered promises."**

Disclaimer from me, **momentarything**: I don't own Meredith or Derek or _Grey's Anatomy _or Alex, Izzie, or Cristina. Shonda Rhimes does. Unless I buy it from her. Then Mer/Der can have all the hot steamy sugar they want. I do, however, own the large, fake ER nurse at the end. At least I got one character to cuddle up with at night….wait…ugh. On with the story then, peeps.

Of Scalpels and Whispered Promises Chapter 1: Reality's Reflection 

She stared out over the skylights in the city. 'Three sides water,' she thought. A heaven on earth. And the people in this strange whirlpool of a city, on this strange harbor of life where the known meets the unknown and the land meets the unyielding sea, were just figuring out their existence in this semi-heaven. _Existence. _How interesting and rare that word was. She was a stranger and a lover to it. She thought she understood what the word meant and yet she was discovering more undiscovered parts of it every day. She realized that she hadn't figured out what it meant today, and wasn't fated to ever realize the whole truth of it. But she was taking little steps, day by day, and it was _him _who made her realize each additional piece and it was _him_ who let her put the pieces together, just as he took others apart with scalpels and whispered promises.

Her fingers tingled with sensations of freezing and burning at the same time. She laughed to herself softly. _Freezerburn._ She imagined Cristina's reaction to her little mental quip. She would have immediately prescribed treatment for the voices in her head. And severed all public ties with her.

Meredith shivered and stuffed her cold hands in her pockets. A semi-numb finger brushed against the stone-washed pockets of her new Sevens, bringing back feeling to the finger which was accompanied by a sharp sting of superficial pain. Meredith glanced down at her paper-cut finger, remembering the filing accident earlier that day and realizing the root of her reveries—a bright pink Barbie Band-Aid. No wonder life was suddenly freaking her out. The Hello Kitty incident years ago should have taught her better.

As she shifted her hands in her pockets, she felt the rustling of a thin piece of paper. Pulling it out, Meredith found it to be a receipt from an impulsive ticket purchase one month back. She and Alex and Izzie had stopped by at a ticket booth on their way to a bar and had purchased tickets to Salsa Night at the Grand downtown. _They're probably having a blast right now. On second thoughts, they're probably getting kicked out right now. Too much feeling up and too little dancing. It can be a little distracting to the other guests._ She was somehow never awed by the raw passion and indismissible attraction that coursed through the bonds of their relationship even today. Alex and Izzie would always have that intensity. Their feelings ran through their veins like the warm blood that was now keeping Meredith alive.

Meredith's thoughts returned to that of her own life, her own relationships. She thought of romance and chocolate, yachts and big houses, mothers and daughters, appendectomies and hearts, and the world. She thought of all those couples out there. _Those couples_. She sighed breathlessly. _Everyone else._

On weekends, those other couples would stroll along the harbor and hold hands. They would dine, they would watch tv. They would read the newspaper and cut vegetables. They would sit by the fire and they would squabble. They would squirt substances out of the little plastic spray cleaner cans and watch each other squirm in the wetness before they told their significant others that their Clorox sprays only held clean tap water. Then they would balance their checkbooks and share reading glasses, and they would go on runs with dogs named Fluffy or Oreo. They would do normal things and have normal lives because they weren't in love with their bosses or sleeping with married men.

But these were ancient thoughts, thoughts that had long left her mind and had been replaced by new fresh ones, new parts of existence.

Because on weekends in her life, she and _him_ would do their own thing. They would put the world back together piece by piece not in their homes but in an OR. They would wash their hands together and look for anesthesiologists together at pre-op. They would share scalpels and hemisphere drainers, pieces of bone and blood packets. They would share glances across sheets of blue, wondering what the other was thinking or what they would have to deal with next. Would there be hemorrhaging? Splintering? And when work was done, when the nurse assist would finally hand them the blue towel, they would remove their matching scrubs and go find which steak had her name on it today. Because that was the future and Fluffy and Oreo and doubt and denial and Clorox were all in the past.

"Dr. Shepherd? Dr. Shepherd I have a message for you!" the voice of a frantic ER nurse snapped her out of her daydream. Meredith turned around to take in the new presence next to her, breathless against the backdrop of the front entrance at Seattle Grace Hospital. The nurse was heaving breaths from running so fast. She put a hand up to Meredith to indicate that she was to give her a second to catch her breath, which she did bending over on her knees. She continued.

" Dr. Shepherd, your husband tried to page you but your pager is off. He's calling you to Main OR 2 right now…they're prepping for emergency craniotomy." The clerical nurse relayed her message off of an ugly piece of yellow office-paper.

Meredith nodded. She turned back to the lights in the distance while rubbing her fingers to get rid of the cold. After all, she was a surgeon. There was a life in her hands tonight. But it was all right, she thought. The world was all right because she was here and alive, and he was here and with her. And existence was there. It was everywhere. She was drowning in it. She stood for one last moment, drinking in her world and her life. Maybe if they made it back to the trailer early tonight, he would take her for a _ride_.

_Fin._

Thx for reading! Drop me a line, doesn't take long and keeps me happy knowing that someone is reading sweet MerDer love. Plus if I get some fan love I might venture into some dirty MerDer as well, just as a treat for you loyal guys.

**momentarything**


End file.
